HARBOUR BOARD
Harbour Board are a Auckland-based band combining elements of ambient, folk, experimental pop, and cinematic sound design. Formed by Matthew Sunderland, Jeffrey Holdaway, Marc Chesterman, and Nicolas Tillon, the group blends analogue synths, field recordings, live brass, and spoken word into layered, narrative-driven compositions.
Their music often draws from collaborative origins—shaped through soundtracks, urban fieldwork, and multimedia projects—before being reworked collectively in the studio. Harbour Board’s releases reflect themes of place, memory, and quiet observation, with arrangements that unfold gradually through voice, texture, and mood.
DANGEROUS ELECTRICITY MACHINE
Release: 1st September 2025
Dangerous Electricity Machine is Harbour Board’s spring 2025 single, blending bubbling analog synths, flutes, electric guitar, and layered percussion with the baritone vocals of NZ actor Matthew Sunderland. Developed from a soundtrack to a site-specific dance project by Jeffrey Holdaway, the track was later restructured by the full band into a multi-part narrative.
The lyrics reflect on fatherhood and suburban wandering, shifting through ambient sections, chorus-driven swells, and a brass-led bridge featuring a trumpet and saxophone call-and-response between Nico Tillon and guest saxophonist Kim Taite.
ASTRONOMY
Instrumental version released 1st Aug 2025
The instrumental version of “Astronomy” offers a meditative blend of ambient folk and cinematic minimalism. Built from layered field recordings, brushed percussion, warm analog textures, and slow-building brass, the track unfolds gradually—evoking space, memory, and landscape without the use of words.
Featured as the soundtrack to the NZ Herald podcast The Rainbow Warrior: A Forgotten History, this version was composed as an atmospheric soundscape, with the narrative structure held by layered violins played by Tamasin Taylor (of The Nudie Suits)
The song was originally the first ever recorded by Harbour Board. Matt and Jeff were discussing the formation of the band in Matt's Devonport lounge and comparing their mountain road trips, being lost on NZ's "lost highway", spending nights in snow bound towns with distant trains rumbling through the hills. Microphones were picked up and the initial version of Astronomy was recorded.
Later this song was re-imagined, made more salty and sunken as it was re-worked into the Rainbow Warrior podcast in 50 different ways.
THE SIGNAL
Summer 2024
“The Signal” by Harbour Board continues the band’s exploration of memory, distance, and storytelling first heard on their debut EP The Strays.
Harbour Board explore the conflicting emotions following the siren call of wandering in lands across the sea while hearing the call of home.
“The Signal is as much about geography as it is about desire, the keen pining I have felt for New Zealand whilst in Australia, and vice versa. Certain events have led me to identify deeply to my adopted homeland, and this push pull reflex continues to this day. Yet within that exquisite conundrum, lies another, almost imperceptible calling, the possibility of love” – Matthew Sunderland.
This track also features guest appearances from Gareth Price who is best known as the guitarist from the Auckland indie rock band Augustino, and singer/songwriter/actress Greta van den Brink.
Matthew and Greta both appear in the Australian series “Territory” screening now on Netflix.
The Signal: Download Content
THE STRAY
Winter 2024
With a sound that nods toward the crooners of the 1950s or perhaps the softer ballads of Nick Cave, Harbour Board brings us a cautionary tale set on a lonely mountainside. With chiming bell-like guitars and sparse airy piano, Mathew Sunderland tells us a story of a man haunted by destruction backed by Heather Mansfield’s ghostly vocals.
“The Stray began as a demo I knocked out in a single take in a blind guitarist mate’s living room a few sheets to the wind. When Jeffrey and I reworked it, I realised it was about an old friend Tania who had lost her life under horrific circumstances in a Grey Lynn halfway house. I had first met her sitting at Verona cafe in the early noughties. It was very late and I was sitting in a booth by myself singing to no one in particular and suddenly this girl’s voice drifted across the room, singing along with me, like a call and response. Suddenly she appeared, this force of nature charisma machine and before you knew it we were thick as thieves, inseparable. We formed a band called "The Strays" and did our first and only gig at the W H Tongue funeral parlour on the corner of Symonds Street and Mt Eden Road. Then I moved to Sydney and we lost touch, and then, one terrible afternoon, she was gone”. - Matthew Sunderland.
The preview track of The Stray has featured on Neptune Selector and Radio New Zealand's Culture 101
BIOGRAPHIES
HARBOUR BOARD
Harbour Board is a music project with vocals by actor/writer/director Matthew Sunderland and production from audio designer Jeffrey Holdaway with recorded percussion by Marc Chesterman and brass by Nico Tillon.
Known for portraying dark and emotionally troubled characters, Matthew is a familiar face in Australasian cinema appearing in over 20 Australian and New Zealand feature films. His next appearance is in the Australian Netflix series “Territory” which premieres on October 24th.
Jeffrey is an audio engineer with a long history in recording and mixing for NZ indie cinema productions, independent alternative music and live performance.
Harbour Board takes inspiration from the long tradition of folk singers from Woody Guthrie through Leonard Cohen to Nick Cave mixed with sounds informed by cinema soundtrack and the influence of contemporary indie rock.
The project that became Harbour Board had a long gestation. The members of this band originally met back in 2003 when Jeffrey and Marc were the sound team recording and producing the sound for the cult cinema classic “Woodenhead” in which Matthew Sunderland played a mute circus strongman.
“Even though we didn’t use his voice much in recording the film, Matthew’s voice was always one I kept in the back of my mind as something I wanted to record. We worked together on a few other cinema projects but somehow the stars never aligned to do a music project for nearly 20 years”. – Jeffrey Holdaway.
Eventually, in mid-2022, Matthew and Jeffrey were in the same city at the same time and began working through leftover material saved on hard drives from Jeffrey’s past projects creating and recording new instrumentation and vocals around rough vocal demos Matthew had made in various cities around the world. As the songs materialised and grew Marc and Nico became involved in the project.
Marc Chesterman is a composer, experimental musician, audio engineer and producer based in Wellington, his fascination with percussion drives the drum track mixing in Harbour Board.
Nicolas Tillon is a brass player from Nantes, France. A past member of the gypsy brass band Imperial Kikiristan, he now lives in Auckland.
Various other old friends make one-off appearances on the debut Harbour Board EP. Heather Mansfield from The Brunettes sings the backing vocals on “The Stray” and Tamasin Taylor from The Nudie Suits plays the violins on “Astronomy”, Gareth Price from Augustino and Greta van den Brink appear on the following single “The Signal”.
Matthew Sunderland
Vocals and Lyrics
Matthew Sunderland, an award-winning actor from New Zealand, has long been celebrated for his portrayals of emotionally complex, often broken characters across film, television, and theatre. In recent years, he has added a new dimension to his creative life—as a singer-songwriter under the music project Harbour Board.
Sunderland is perhaps best known for his chilling, award-winning performance as David Gray in Out of the Blue(2006), a portrayal that earned him Best Actor at the Qantas Film and TV Awards. His career has been defined by a deep commitment to roles that explore the margins of human behaviour—outsiders, loners, and morally ambiguous figures. This same sensibility now permeates his music, where he continues to give voice to what he calls “life’s strays.”
In 2024, Sunderland launched Harbour Board, a folk-rock project that leans into a cinematic and emotionally austere sound. The debut EP The Strays and follow-up single The Signal introduced a new side of the performer: a songwriter and vocalist with a deep baritone and a lyrical approach informed by years of inhabiting fractured characters on screen.
His musical style has drawn comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and Bill Callahan—songwriters known for their low-register vocals, poetic economy, and themes of longing and loss. Sunderland’s delivery is slow-burning and atmospheric, shaped by a performer’s instinct for timing and emotional control. The songs are less about catchy choruses and more about tone, imagery, and psychological terrain.
Sunderland views singing as an extension of acting rather than a separate craft. “I think of the singer as a character, too,” he told RNZ in a 2024 interview. “Each song is a scene or a monologue, really. I’m trying to live inside the words.” His songwriting reflects that ethos—filled with mood, ambiguity, and elliptical narratives about memory, estrangement, and the search for meaning.
In parallel with his music, Sunderland remains active on screen. In 2024, he took on the role of Charles Bukowski in the Australian TV drama Plum, portraying the iconic writer as a spectral presence that haunts the lead character. The performance was noted for its grit, irreverence, and an unfiltered honesty that mirrors the tone of his musical work. That same year, he appeared in The Territory, playing a drifting cowboy in the outback—another of his signature outsider roles.
Harbour Board is more than a side project—it represents a deeper evolution in Sunderland’s creative journey. He writes and co-produces the music with an eye (and ear) for detail, shaping songs that feel like cinematic short stories. The themes—masculinity, dislocation, emotional numbness—are consistent with the terrain he’s long explored in film and television.
Ultimately, whether on stage, screen, or in song, Matthew Sunderland remains committed to storytelling that is unflinching, vulnerable, and deeply human. Harbour Board is simply the latest—and perhaps most personal—expression of that mission.
Jeffrey Holdaway
Keyboards and production
Jeffrey Holdaway is an Auckland-based audio engineer, sound designer, and music producer whose career spans independent film, theatre, performance, and music. He is the co-founder and producer of the music group Harbour Board, a project formed in 2022 with actor and vocalist Matthew Sunderland. The group’s debut EP, The Strays, was released in 2024 and showcases Holdaway’s production approach, blending acoustic instrumentation, atmospheric sound design, and field recordings to support Sunderland’s narrative-driven songwriting.
Holdaway’s collaboration with Sunderland began in 2003 on Florian Habicht’s film Woodenhead, where Holdaway worked as part of the sound team. Their creative partnership continued over time, eventually leading to the formation of Harbour Board. Alongside Sunderland, the group includes percussionist and composer Marc Chesterman and French brass player Nicolas Tillon. Holdaway recorded, produced, and mixed all Harbour Board material, including songs used in the 2025 documentary podcast The Rainbow Warrior: A Forgotten History.
Before his work with Harbour Board, Holdaway developed a career in sound for film and performance. He has over two decades of experience in location recording, dialogue editing, mixing, and post-production sound for New Zealand films. His credits include Habicht’s Woodenhead (2003) and Kaikohe Demolition (2004), along with various documentaries and short films. His role often involved shaping ambient and narrative soundtracks, contributing to the distinctive sonic identity of independent New Zealand cinema.
In addition to film, Holdaway has worked extensively in theatre, dance, and multimedia projects. He has contributed sound design and technical production to interdisciplinary works, including collaborations with choreographer Alys Longley and design collective DotDot. These projects combine movement, sound, and visual design in both live and digital formats. Holdaway’s work often integrates original recordings, environmental audio, and digital composition to create immersive sonic environments.
His production work reflects a consistent interest in sound as both a technical craft and artistic medium. With Harbour Board, Holdaway brings his background in film and performance sound to a music context, producing recordings that are layered, cinematic, and closely connected to lyrical storytelling. He continues to work across music, theatre, and multimedia, contributing to projects that merge analogue and digital practices in contemporary sound and art-making.
Marc Chesterman
Drums and production
Marc Chesterman is a New Zealand composer, audio engineer, and sound designer whose diverse career spans film, theatre, podcasts, radio, and music. Based in Wellington, he has developed a reputation for his distinctive sonic style, marked by a blend of ambient textures, field recordings, and carefully layered compositions.
Chesterman began his career in the early 1990s, performing in bands Lushburger, Sudersuk and Audible3 - then working across theatre and dance. He collaborated extensively with companies such as MAU, Auckland Theatre Company, Massive, and Pandemonium. He toured internationally and contributed to productions as composer, sound designer, and live mixer. These formative experiences established his deep interest in interdisciplinary sound practice and live performance environments.
He is perhaps best known for his long-standing creative partnership with filmmaker Florian Habicht. Over two decades, Chesterman has composed scores and designed sound for Habicht’s acclaimed films, including Woodenhead (2003), Kaikohe Demolition (2004), Rubbings from a Live Man (2008), Land of the Long White Cloud (2009), Love Story (2011), and Spookers (2017), the latter earning him a nomination for Best Original Score at the APRA Silver Scrolls. His film work is distinguished by a playful, often surreal sensibility and an ability to capture emotional nuance through unconventional sound design.
In audio post-production, Chesterman brings over 17 years of experience at Radio New Zealand and Sky TV. He has engineered, mixed, and mastered numerous award-winning podcasts including The Lake, Mr Asia (A Forgotten History), Rainbow Warrior (A Forgotten History), He Kākano Ahau, Voice of the Iceberg and The Good Sex Project S1 +S2.
In recent years, Chesterman has also focused on experimental solo releases. Notable projects include Jean’s Piano, an intimate album built around recordings of his grandmother’s piano playing. Other releases, such as Koala Time and Loop Zones#1 showcase his interest in found sound, repetition, and acoustic manipulation.Working with Harbour Board, he has come back to his first love of playing drums and percussion in a highly enjoyable collaboration with Jeff Holdaway and Matt Sunderland.
Marc Chesterman’s multifaceted output reflects a lifelong dedication to sonic experimentation, the subtleties of storytelling, and collaboration.
Nicolas Tillon
Brass
Nicolas Tillon is a French-born brass musician based in Auckland, New Zealand, and a contributing member of the indie folk-rock group Harbour Board. Originally from Nantes, he previously performed with the French gypsy brass band Imperial Kikiristan before relocating to Aotearoa. Since joining Harbour Board in 2022, Tillon has contributed brass arrangements to recordings including their debut EP The Strays (2024), the single The Signal (2024), and the instrumental release Astronomy (2025). His playing introduces a European brass influence to the band’s blend of folk and indie rock.
Recording brass with Nicolas Tillon
